This passage is the gospel for this coming Sunday and is the passage I will probably preach on. Here are some of the thoughts that have come to me as I have been exploring it. This is not a sermon (that will come later); just some preliminary mediations. I am now going to turn to the commentaries to see what they have to say. If you have any thoughts to add, please feel free to do so in the comments.
21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”.
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”.
‘From that time on’ connects this to the previous passage. In verses 13-20 we read about a time when Jesus and his disciples were in the area of Caesarea Philippi, and he asked them about his identity – first ‘Who do others say I am?’ and then ‘What do you say?’ Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”. Jesus affirmed this answer and assured Peter that it had been revealed to him by the Father in heaven.
Central to this previous passage is the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. At the end of the passage Jesus had commanded his followers not to let anyone in on this truth. The reason is not hard to find. The word ‘Messiah’, in common speech in those days, was not just a ‘religious’ word; it had political and military connotations. Messianic pretenders didn’t just preach in synagogues; they led rebellions against the Roman empire. For Jesus’ followers to acclaim him as the Messiah would be to invite the immediate attention of the Roman overlords. It was not so long since John had been executed as a threat to the powers that be; Jesus knew what was in store for him, but the time was not yet, and so he downplayed the word.
With his disciples, however, he accepted the designation and immediately began to explore it. What did it mean for him to be the Messiah? They must put out of their minds all the notions of glory and victory and power. Yes, those things would come eventually (“for the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father”), but first there was a hard road to be walked – the road of the Cross.
21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
This is the first time Jesus has predicted his death in Matthew’s gospel; there are three such predictions, but we probably shouldn’t take that number as being exhaustive, as the language used here is ‘From that time on, Jesus began to show…’ – in other words, this was a regular subject in their conversation from this point.
I find it interesting that the language is not just that of prediction but of demonstrated necessity – in other words, it’s not just ‘This is something that is going to happen’, but ‘This is something that I must do’. The word ‘show’ is also interesting. It seems to me that, given the language used, what was happening was that Jesus was ‘showing’ his disciples in the scriptures that it was necessary for the Messiah to do this. Not, of course in the literal sense of ‘showing them in the Bible that he had open in front of him’, as this would be an anachronism (scriptures were written on scrolls and were prohibitively expensive); the discussion took place from memory. What was involved was a reinterpretation of Messianic prophecy, possibly with specific reference to the ‘Suffering Servant’ passages in Isaiah (given their prominence in early apostolic interpretation of the Cross, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the apostles got that interpretation from Jesus). These passages are used to demonstrate that Jesus will be ‘despised and rejected’ by the leaders of the nation, will suffer and die, and then rise again on the third day.
I doubt whether the apostles got as far as the third day in their listening, though; I’m pretty sure they didn’t make it past ‘be killed’. This was not part of the Messianic job-description they had received, which was to liberate God’s people and win a great victory over their enemies. The Messiah was not supposed to ‘be killed’; if there was any killing to be done, he was the one doing it, just as David had defeated all the nations enemies and given them justice and peace. And so Peter protests:
22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”
The irony of saying, “God forbid it, Lord!” seems to have escaped Peter. When you call someone ‘Lord’, it is not your place to tell them that they are going off in the wrong direction. Whatever else we mean by calling Jesus our Lord and Master, surely it is includes believing that he is smarter than we are! But of course the problem was that Jesus’ startling new revelation of what he was about to do didn’t fit in with Peter’s view of who Jesus was and what he should be doing. And that of course is not just ancient history; it happens today, as we all have our incomplete and inaccurate images of Jesus and then get worried and offended when he chooses not to fit in with them. Jesus the liberation fighter, Jesus the divine figure staring out of the icon, Jesus the upholder of conservative/progressive/liberal/socialist values etc. etc. Then when we find Jesus saying and doing things that contradict our vision, don’t we take him aside and say “God forbid, Lord!”?
23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”.
How quickly things can change! Just a few verses beforehand Jesus has been commending Peter for his spiritual insight: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (v.17). Now Jesus issues this unparalleled and surely stinging rebuke to his beloved friend and chief disciple. What is behind this?
‘Get behind me, Satan’ surely recalls the temptations in the wilderness in chapter 4. The third temptation was to take the easy way to win the kingdoms of the world, by worshipping the Devil. Surely this was not just a matter of kneeling before him and praying to him, because we become like what we worship. To worship the devil meant adopting the devil’s ways, the ways of coercion, cruelty, violence, oppression etc. Obviously this would be much more appealing than the road of suffering that led to the Cross. And I can see how this would be very attractive to Jesus. The lure of the ‘zealot road’, the road of armed rebellion against Rome (which was surely the most obvious way to be ‘the Messiah’) must have been a constant temptation to him in his ministry.
This is surely what is behind the forcefulness of his rebuke to Peter. This was not the first time he had heard this suggestion; it had been whispered in his ears many times throughout his ministry, and he knew where it ultimately came from: the enemy who had tried to divert him at the beginning was still doing so. And so the great apostle became the Devil’s unwitting mouthpiece and became a ‘skandalon’, a stumbling block.
To ‘set the mind on human things’ is to employ common sense, worldly wisdom, human logic, rather than the wisdom of God which, as Paul says, is foolishness to the world. To take up the sword and lead the armies of God against the enemy may be risky, but at least it makes sense. To win a victory by allowing yourself to be killed defies logic. But it is not just the path for Jesus; it is also the call of his followers as well:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
‘Take up your cross’ has taken on a very sentimental meaning in today’s world. It has come to be a general phrase for living an unselfish life or a life of suffering. Alternatively, it refers to a particular suffering God is believed to have ‘laid on’ the person (‘my mother-in-law is the cross I have to bear, I suppose!’) – a difficult relationship, a cancer diagnosis, a demanding assignment etc.
Undoubtedly this spiritual reinterpretation has brought comfort to millions of people; however, it is emphatically not what ‘taking up your cross’ meant to Jesus’ first followers. When they saw someone carrying a cross, they knew that he or she had been condemned to die by the Romans, and the Romans reserved this penalty of crucifixion for rebels against the empire. Jesus knew he was called to undergo this penalty and to accept it without resistance, and he called his followers to do the same. “I am going to be crucified as a dangerous rebel, and the same thing is going to happen to you as well. And you must embrace this and endure it in the same way that I endure it” (Peter explores the implications of this for disciples in 1 Peter 2:21-25).
On the night before the crucifixion Peter will deny Jesus three times in order to save himself, but the disciples are called, rather than denying Jesus, to ‘deny themselves’, their own lives, liberties, and dreams, and embrace the call to suffering. This is what it means to follow Jesus.
25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
The temptation is indeed to ‘save their life’, and we all know that temptation. “I don’t want to suffer, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to love my enemies. I want to protect myself; surely you can’t ask more of me, Lord?” but ‘more’ is exactly what he does ask; he asks us to tread the same path he trod. A movement that is intended to change the world will get nowhere if its followers put their own comfort and safety first. A movement that wants to change the world needs people who will be totally committed to it and will be willing to put their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness on the line for it – or rather, ‘for him’: ‘those who lose their life for my sake will find it’.
If we duck this challenge, as Peter ducked it on the Thursday night before Jesus died, we may well have guaranteed our safety but we will have lost something far more important – our integrity, our self-respect, our ‘soul’ even. This does not mean that there can be no forgiveness (Peter himself was restored and forgiven); it simply means that being a Christian involves being willing to pay the ultimate price, if that is what is necessary.
There is a positive way of looking at this as well. How do we ‘gain’ our life? How do we enjoy life in all its fullness (John 10:10)? Jesus says here that it isn’t by focusing on ourselves and doing all that is necessary to ensure our own safety or happiness. No – what we need is a cause worth living and dying for; we need a worthwhile challenge, something that we can commit our lives to, something that will give us a sense of purpose and direction. How many times have we heard parents and spouses of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan talk about how their loved one “Died doing what he believed in”. “He thought it was really important and he was willing to put his life on the line for it”. This is what Jesus gives us: a cause big enough to make the ultimate sacrifice worthwhile – the cause of the kingdom of God, the healing and renewal of the world according to God’s good purposes.
And once we are willing to pay this ultimate price – rejection, suffering, and death at the hands of our peers because of our allegiance to the true King, Jesus – then of course the other stuff falls into place as well. We are willing to turn from sin, to embrace hardship and suffering, because we know that the Christian life is not one long easy romp to heaven, but is the way of the cross. Difficulty and discouragement do not surprise us…
‘There’s no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim’
Rather, we see them as a normal and integral part of Christian faithfulness.
And we are not the losers in this bargain:
27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”.
No one who follows Jesus faithfully will be the loser in the long term, although we might have to wait a while for the ‘long term’ to come about. As Jim Elliot famously wrote, ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose’.
Verse 28 raises issues because it makes it seem as if Jesus was mistaken about the timing of the coming of the kingdom. Alternately, we might have to revise our view of what Jesus meant by the coming of the kingdom. Possibly the events of his death, resurrection and ascension were indeed the coming of the kingdom. However, I don’t want to spend a lot of time exploring this as it is not central to the meaning of the passage.
What are a few more implications of this gospel passage for us?
We Canadian Christians do not suffer very much for Christ, and the consequence of this in our lives is that we try to avoid even the little suffering that we are called on to endure. Our Christianity is so often an easy road, focusing on the blessings of the gospel and avoiding any talk of holiness, of sacrifice, of service and suffering.
Part of this is the legacy of Christendom. We are used to having the world on our side, to having our values resonate with the values of the world around us. For hundreds of years the Christian scriptures and the moral standards of the Bible have been at least theoretically affirmed by the world around us. And so we have not learned the skills for being different, for marching to a different drummer and for enduring scorn and suffering when they result. We could learn a lot from religious minorities in this respect.
Jesus expected that the powers that be in his day would see his followers as a threat and would want to ‘take them out’. Today we expect that the world around us will like us (and flock to our churches), and if they don’t we ask what is wrong. Maybe we need to meditate a little on the implications of John 15:18-25 for Christian life today.
This coming Sunday we will be having two baptisms at our 10.30 service – baptisms of little children. We rejoice in this and we will try to make the event a joyful celebration. But maybe we need to remember that a baptism is also a death – a death to self and a commitment to a life of discipleship. The BCP baptism service called on the new Christians to ‘fight manfully under (Christ’s) banner against sin, the world, and the devil’. Maybe we need that note of realism, of challenge, of commitment, as we celebrate the baptism of our children on Sunday. Yes, it is a joyful thing to be adopted as a child of God – but there is a price to be paid as well.
